chiefs

While the Patriots defense has been trending up the last few games, I was surprised to see they had fallen from a mid-season 23rd-ranked run defense to 30th in Football Outsider’s DVOA, an analytic that weighs situation and opponent. This is of course about when Dont’a Hightower went on IR, so some drop-off should be expected but it hadn’t been all that glaring to me recently.

If they do have a bad run defense it hasn’t hurt them in the win column. Last week against the Bills they gave up their second-highest yardage total this season (183) and held them to three points. Opening night against the Chiefs (185) remains the highest and only time a team actually ran to victory over New England.

So is this a real flaw for the Pats’ defense? Will LeVeon Bell be able to exploit it? Could the Steelers ride that to victory? Miami got a season-low 67 yards on the ground vs. New England and doesn’t look like they’ll do much more this Monday night.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the bigger running plays against and how much impact they had on the game.

One of the packages that I thought could help offset the loss of Julian Edelman was the use of both James White and Dion Lewis coming out of the backfield. While the Patriots did employ this package against the Chiefs it wasn’t all that effective, but it really should’ve been.

In today’s film study I pulled a third quarter play to take a bit of a closer look at why the offense seemed to get off track without Amendola. At this point the Patriots are up 17-14 with just under 10 minutes left in the third. This is a third-and-12, the kind of tough down Edelman lived to convert. In this situation the Patriots didn’t have much to work with, but the direction of the offense should be obvious going forward.

Join me and Nick Stevens for Episode number 105 of Patshow, our new Facebook Live venture powered by the mad geniuses at MediaBoss. In this episode we let Fitzy puppet breakdown what we were all feeling during the Chiefs debacle, take a look at some of the best social media to come out of the game and break down one of the key defensive failures during the game. All that and plenty more Pats talk on Patshow!

I usually avoid most of the hot take media, especially in days after losses. No one knows how to overreact quite like Patriots fans and pundits, but after a couple days to sit on the game and review it, I feel like this loss was a nice hit of the reset button that should re-focus the 2017 team on 2017. You can even check the NFL odds by BetOnline to see that yes, the Patriots are still favored in New Orleans against the Saints.

The Patriots aren’t going anywhere. I know it. Vegas knows it. And most of you probably know it too. But for those of you still running around screaming that the Patriot sky is falling, here are some things to keep in mind.

Let’s break down what’s actually worrisome and what we can just chalk up to September being an extension of the preseason.

As is usually the case, I felt a lot better about the Patriots offense after reviewing the All-22 game film. They certainly didn’t play great, but 27 points against a good defense is nothing to dismiss. The Chiefs had an effective gameplan and often blanketed the Patriots’ receivers in man-to-man coverage with a single high safety.

It was as if defensive coordinator Bob Sutton dialed up the same old scheme that we saw the Patriots struggle with during times of turnover. When there isn’t a receiver Brady trusted implicitly defenses had success crowding the line of scrimmage and forcing Brady to decipher the coverage. While Brady usually figures these things out, he wasn’t quite on the same page with his weapons for most of the game.

So yeah, put up 27 on a bad night? I’ll take it. Things will certainly get better, this just wasn’t the sharpest game for Brady and offense.

Plowed my way through the first defensive review of the All 22 film and as always it put things into perspective when watching without the emotion of the broadcast. Of course there were bad plays and busted coverages, but there was also plenty to feel positive about.

In a lot of ways it did remind me of the 2014 Chiefs loss in that players just weren’t getting off blocks and making plays. That kind of performance is often common the first few weeks of the season, with one ugly game almost always popping up — remember losing to the Cardinals at home in 2012?

But the poor performance would’ve been so much different if not for a few blown coverages and I fully expect there to be fewer blown coverages the rest of this season than there were in Week One.

As you’d expect there’s plenty of panic about the Patriots’ defense after Thursday night’s blow out loss. Last year the defense led the league in points against but people were still worried that they actually were not good. So after giving up the most points and yards under Belichick it’s understandable that the defense is a major focal point of the ire.

Discerning between what problems are real and what problems can be chalked up to the first game of the season on a short week against a good opponent is the key here and when you really break things down the real problems are obvious. Whether or not the Patriots have the personnel at this point to fix those problems will be a point of debate, but I think we can all agree that the defense is always in a somewhat experimental phase in September and that they’re always far more sound down the line, even when they have to throw guys like Joe Vellano and Chris Jones in the heart of their defense early on (2013).

One point that’s very much worth pointing out is how effective Kansas City was at exploiting the communication issues on defense. Eric Mangini said when he was with the Browns, a big offensive focus for going against the Patriots was having multiple shifts and motions that forced the Patriots to adjust their calls. He called the Patriots defense “rule-based” so every movement by the offense required 11 adjustment calls on defense. The more movement the more chance at miscommunication, and the Chiefs seemed to do that repeatedly.

Their pre-snap motion seemed to mix the Patriots up quite a few times, resulting in blown coverages and too many wide open receivers. First, not all teams have the kind of versatility that the Chiefs have in this regard, especially with a mobile quarterback. Second, this communication will improve for the Patriots, whether Dont’a Hightower plays every single game or not.

There are just two simple keys for the defense as we move on to the Saints — win on first down and don’t give up big plays. That’s how simple it is.

Interesting. I don’t remember that defense, but it certainly sounds a lot like what the Pats are doing now. Perhaps the most interesting thing in the comparison is that you can see where the Pats’ weakness is. Urlacher is a former safety who can cover a lot of ground in the middle of the field. […]